The Essential Day Spa Forum (here forth referred to as "EDS Forum") is provided by Essential Day Spa (here forth referred to as "EDS") and has a collection of EDS Forum Standards that govern its proper use. The standards are divided into four parts viz., EDS Forum Guidelines, EDS Forum Structure and Functionality Statement, EDS Forum Member Agreement, and EDS Forum Conditions of Use, the content of which is summarised below.

The EDS Forum Guidelines outline some common-sense behaviour that is expected from all members online. These guidelines have been developed to ensure an enjoyable community for all, and include principles such as observing all laws; showing basic manners; using good judgement; and not posting unsolicited advertisements or "spam".

The EDS Forum Structure and Functionality Statement includes information on the appropriate thematic placement of new posts, as well as including guidelines and information on member names, signatures, the use of the Private Messaging (PM) system and search functionality.

The EDS Forum Member Agreement contains the legal terms of EDS Forum membership and outlines the responsibilities of members.

The EDS Forum Conditions of Use explain the legal responsibilities of the EDS Forum to EDS members and visitors.

All members must check the four documents on a regular basis as EDS reserves the right to amend them from time to time.

1. EDS Forum Guidelines:

Appropriate Content:
EDS and EDS Forum moderators reserve the right to remove content that does not meet our content standards. EDS and EDS Forum moderators do not assume any liability if such content is not removed, and make the final determination about whether content is objectionable or not. EDS and EDS Forum moderators do not endorse opinions posted by EDS members. EDS members who post content that does not meet EDS content standards will have their posts removed without explanation. Serious or repeated offences will result in removal of member's access to the EDS Forum.

The following basic guidelines apply:

EDS Forum Usernames:
Usernames that are offensive or that attempt to impersonate or represent any person or entity in order to deceive, harass or otherwise mislead another member, are not allowed.

Language:
While very mild expletives and non-sexual anatomical references may be allowed in some contexts, you may not post content that includes profanity, strong vulgar language, crude, lewd or explicit sexual references, epithets, harsh personal insults or that attacks individuals or groups or that expresses contempt or hatred based on race, religion, ethnic origin, gender or sexual preference. This guideline would also extend to the use of the EDS Forum Private Messaging system.

Personal Attacks, Civility and Respect:
Personal attacks of any kind are strictly prohibited. Every member is expected to participate in a spirit of respect, constructive non-personal criticism and civil discourse. If you disagree with another member, (politely) attack or challenge the idea, information or opinion shared but do NOT attack the member sharing it.
Do not post comments that bait, insult, flame, defame, make fun of or abuse members or non-members or otherwise incite drama or create a hostile environment. Do not use use rude, patronizing or inflammatory language and keep sarcastic or snide comments to yourself.
Do not dismiss or disparage another member as a troll, a shill, a disciple, a devotee, a harpy, a sock puppet or any other label used in a negative sense. Note that it is a personal attack to call a liar a liar or to call an idiot an idiot and that responding to an insult with an insult makes a poster as guilty of flaming as the original poster. Do not post a link to an external source that implies any of the above about a member.
Do not harass others by "post stalking" them from one discussion thread to another with sarcastic or passive-aggressive comments in response to their posts. Do not follow someone into another thread to try to continue a disagreement had elsewhere. Do not mock, make fun of or talk negatively about other members in a thread where they are not participating or anywhere else on the forum.

Behaviour:
Please stay on topic and do not change the main subject of the thread. Please respect the views and opinions of others in our community even if you disagree with them. Please do not repeatedly post the same message over and over. Please do not repost content that has been edited or deleted by the moderators or post comments discussing the moderation. You may not use the EDS Forum or its Private Messaging system to facilitate distribution of harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, or in a reasonable person's view, objectionable content.

Personal Disputes:
Please do not use the forum for personal disputes, flame wars, inciting drama or as a means to discredit members or non-members. You are expected to treat others with respect and take any personal disputes to a private mode of discussion off the public forum. If you want to point out an error, do so in a respectful, non-personal manner.
Do not bring drama or disputes from other forums onto this one. If you want to talk about it, take it to PM.

Reporting Objectionable Posts:
Please immediately report any objectionable posts to the EDS Forum moderators. Your reporting of such posts allows the EDS Forum moderators to react to potentially unwelcome discussions on the EDS Forum and facilitates the maintenance of an enjoyable online discussion environment to all EDS Forum members and visitors. Note that you should not act as a "back seat moderator" or comment or reply to the post in question, as your response might then have to be deleted if the original post requires removal from the forum. Nor should you post any comments to the moderation itself. Please see the EDS Forum Structure and Functionality section for more details on how to report a post.

Avoiding Duplicate Content:
Please use the search facilities outlined in the EDS Forum Functionality Statement in order to ensure that you are not starting a thread on a topic that is already being discussed.

Multiple Accounts:
Each forum member may only have one account. Clone/multiple/sock puppet accounts will be removed without warning.

Quality and Volume of Posts:
Please be mindful of existing members and refrain from adding posts to the EDS forum that do not beneficially add to the content of the EDS Forum. Each post potentially triggers thousands of emails to members who are watching the topic in question. High volume of such posts degrades the service that EDS Forum can provide to its members and additionally may have the effect of affected members reporting the activity to moderators. This may result in the withdrawal of EDS Forum access from the post author, should they be found to be abusing the EDS Forum.

Personal Information:
Please be careful not to include personal information about yourself or others in your posts. This information is then available to all. Moreover, once it is indexed by search engines (Google in particular) it can still be found via the search engine even if it has been removed from the EDS Forum and the server it resides on. EDS and EDS Forum moderators have no control over indexing and are unable to then remove such search engine cached content.

Sharing of personal information or information about others, such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses, home addresses, passwords, etc., is not allowed. Any such content will be removed without comment.
Extracting or collecting information about EDS Forum members (including, but not limited to, passwords, or e-mail addresses) is also not allowed and will result in immediate withdrawal of access to the EDS Forum.

Commercial Use:
The EDS Forum and its private messaging system may not be used for commercial purposes or advertising of any kind including but not limited to: the distribution of sale or coupon codes, unsolicited advertising, falsified testimonials, self-endorsements, marketing literature, affiliate programs and referrer ID codes, junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, requests for contact or any other form of solicitation. The use of the EDS Forum to solicit marketing research is also forbidden. Note that any member posting accusations of impropriety against another EDS forum member will find their post removed and their membership suspended. Instead, if you feel a member is out for personal gain or not in line with forum policies, then please use the PM system or the Report function to alert the moderators who will deal with it privately in the background.

Hyperlinks:
EDS and EDS Forum moderators are not responsible for the content associated with hyperlinks posted by EDS members. They also take no responsibility for any event or action that occurs as a result of an EDS member or visitor clicking on a hyperlink. Any objectionable or suspicious material should be reported to the moderators via the "report post" functionality.

Images:
You may not use the public EDS Forum, the EDS Private Messaging system or the servers belonging to EDS in order to distribute, facilitate the distribution of, or link to any content that solicits the exchange, sale or purchase of sexually explicit images, and/or material harmful to minors; including, but not limited to, any photograph, film, video, picture or computer generated image or picture.

Copyrighted Material:
Please respect copyright. Do not copy-and-paste entire articles onto our forum. When referencing copyrighted material, please ensure your post meets the fair use standards by keeping the quotation or excerpt short with a link to the original source.
You may not use our community to solicit, distribute, facilitate distribution, or direct link to any content that infringes anyone else's intellectual property rights including, but not limited to, any copyright, trademark, rights of publicity, rights of privacy, or other proprietary rights.

Illegal Behaviour:
The laws that apply in the offline world also apply on the EDS Forum. EDS and its moderators will cooperate with law enforcement in such matters.

Automatic Word Censor:
The EDS Forum may make use of an automatic word censor in order to censor certain words and web addresses from being posted. This censoring is done in the best interest of the EDS members and visitors, and is an automated process (based on a predefined vocabulary set) that replaces the words in question with asterisks. The censoring system is not perfect and may result in some words being censored out of context.

Proper Online Conduct:
Online conduct should be guided by common sense and basic etiquette. You will be considered in violation of the EDS Standards if you violate any of the standards outlined above. Such violation may result in removal of posts as well as the cancellation of membership and withdrawal of access to the EDS Forum.

2. EDS Forum Structure and Functionality:

EDS Forum Sections:
At the time of writing, the publicly available EDS Forum is divided into four main sections, some of which contain sub-sections. These are explained as below.

Product Reviews - for the sole posting of reviews of retail products that a member has had experience with and developed a personal opinion on (please, no new threads that are review requests, no new threads that are questions - only new threads should be started due to a review being posted)

Tools and DIY skincare - for the discussion of any tools related to skin care and the discussion of do-it-yourself product formulation, raw ingredients etc. The Review sub-section is for the sole purpose of sharing reviews of DIY skincare recipes and skincare products borne out of DIY activities.

EDS Lounge - discussions that do not fit into the three sections above. The EDS Forum Issues sub-section is for EDS Forum functionality and technical issue enquiries

EDS and EDS moderators reserve the right to move threads between the various forum sections at their discretion and without notice or explanation. We also reserve the right to add additional sections or restructure the current sectioning of the EDS Forum.

Signatures:
You may set up a signature to be included with all your posts. This can be done in your EDS Forum profile. Once the signature is set up you can specify if it is to be included with any new post you make and you may specify to exclude it when creating a new post on the EDS Forum. The content guidelines outlined above also apply to the content of member signatures.
Member signatures may also be used to disclose professional skin care related affiliations to the EDS community, for example a company name or website, provided they do not include pricing/marketing speak/sales pitch information and the like as per the content guidelines outlined above. Please note that any members found participating in discussions of products or devices for which they have an undisclosed affiliation will find their accounts closed without warning.

Private Messages:
A private message is a personal communication that can only be read by the intended recipient. The EDS Forum provides a Private Messaging system for its registered members, which may be accessed by clicking on the "PM Inbox" hyperlink. To communicate with a chosen EDS member via a private message, locate their profile or one of their posts and click on the "PM" icon. Members may alter their profile preferences to elect to receive email notification upon receipt of a private message.

The contents of your private messages are private communications between you and the intended recipient. We will not monitor, change or disclose contents of these private communications except:

where required by law or to comply with legal process;

where necessary to enforce the EDS Conditions of Use and EDS Standards;

to respond to claims that contents violate third party rights;

to protect the property and/or rights of EDS, EDS Forum, EDS Forum moderators or others; and

to resolve technical issues with the Private Messaging system.

Do not forward or post private messages without the express permission of the original author. This includes private replies to public posts and other private or personal communication including off-forum email.

"Report Post" Function:
EDS Forum provides a facility that allows members to easily and quickly report a post they are viewing if they feel that it violates the EDS Forum standards outlined herein. Members are requested to report objectionable posts, rather then respond to them on the EDS Forum. To report a post, click on the "Report Post" hyperlink when viewing the post in question and type in a quick message on why you think the post violates the EDS Forum standards (e.g. "spam", "should be in EDS Lounge section" , "advertising", etc). The reports are visible only to EDS and EDS moderators. They are acted upon as soon as practically possible. Due to the volume of incoming reports, EDS Forum moderators may not be able to respond to them but do appreciate you taking the time to report objectionable content.

Watched Posts:
The EDS Forum provides functionality for members to choose to be alerted via email when a reply to a particular thread is posted. A thread may be added while being viewed by clicking on the "Watch this topic for replies" hyperlink at the bottom of the page on the right hand side. Watched topics may be managed by clicking on the "Watched Topics" hyperlink u the top of the page. Please be aware the watching too many topics may result on very large amounts of emails being received by you.

"Add a Thank You" function:
Posts of particularly high quality and benefit to the EDS Forum can be thanked by clicking on the "Add a Thank You" link when viewing the post in question. Threads can be viewed by displaying only thanked posts by clicking on the "List thanked posts only" hyperlink. Please use reasonable judgement when using this system. It relies on users doing considering the best interests of the EDS Forum and all EDS Forum members and visitors.

EDS Forum Search:
A search function is provided to EDS members and visitors to enable location of existing posts and prevention of starting threads on already existing topics. The search function is accessed by clicking on the "Search" hyperlink and allows searching various sections of the forum, various date ranges of posts, posts by specific authors, etc.

Google Search Engine provides an additional, and powerful option for searching existing content. In the Google Search window type in your search terms followed by the text "site:essentialdayspa.com/forum". Use "and", "or" and "not" constructs to include or exclude words from your search. Use quotes to search for a specific phrase. For example:

To search for posts containing the acronym "AHA" OR "BHA" type into the Google text box the text contained within the square brackets: [AHA or BHA site:essentialdayspa.com/forum]

To search for posts containing the word "Cellcosmet" and "new" type into the Google text box the text contained within the square brackets: [Cellcosmet AND new site:essentialdayspa.com/forum] (given the current working of the Google algorithm, the "AND" may be omitted)

3. EDS Forum Member Agreement:

The EDS Forum is a real-time online forum where all posts appear as they are posted by registered members. Given this real-time nature, it is not possible for EDS and EDS Forum moderators to read and clear all new posts for validity of content. Accordingly, we do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. The posts are the opinions of the message author and are not necessarily shared by EDS, EDS Forum moderators or other EDS members. We reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread/posting for any reason. Any content published publicly on the forums becomes the property of EDS. Member accounts may be suspended or revoked by EDS for any reason deemed necessary.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your post and private messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless EDS, EDS Forum moderators and all associated with the administration of the EDS Forum. EDS reserves the right to reveal information about you in the event of legal action arising from any post or private message written by you.

You agree that you will not use the EDS Forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, violates any internationally recognized law or otherwise violates EDS Standards. EDS retains the rights to exclusively determine what violates any of the standards or conditions and may make changes to them without notice.

Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable should use the "Report Post" hyperlink available on each post. EDS and EDS Forum moderators have the ability to remove such messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

You agree, not to post any copyrighted material. Anything you post on the EDS Forum is treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary.

The EDS Forum tracks and records your IP address when you browse the EDS orum. While you may choose to be invisible on the list of currently logged-in members, your IP address and your actions are still recorded and are viewable only by EDS and EDS Forum moderators. In the event a member violates EDS Forum Standards, EDS reserve the right to use your IP address to determine your ISP and inform them of your actions, prevent your reading or posting of EDS Forum content, and/or prevent anyone from your ISP from viewing or posting on the EDS Forum. If your reported actions also violate the terms of your ISP's service provision, then this may result in the loss of your internet service.

You permit EDS and EDS Forum moderators to contact you via e-mail and/or private message so we may advise you of important information about the EDS Forum, advise you of changes to your forum membership, and/or advise you of EDS Forum Standards violations.

4. EDS Forum Conditions of Use

Disclaimer:
EDS, EDS Forum moderators and/or any affiliates do not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other information displayed, uploaded or distributed through the EDS Forum by any EDS Forum member or moderator. The member acknowledges that any reliance upon any such opinion, advice, statement, memorandum or information shall be at the member's sole risk. Nevertheless, EDS and EDS Forum moderators reserve the right, at their sole discretion, to correct any errors or omissions in any section of the EDS Forum. The EDS Forum is provided by EDS on an "as is" basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including, without limitation, warranties of title or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. The member hereby acknowledges that use of the EDS Forum is at member's sole risk.

EDS and EDS Forum moderators do not guarantee that the functionality of the EDS Forum will be uninterrupted or error free, or that the EDS Forum, or the server on which it resides, makes it available is free of viruses or other harmful components. However, we do consider the security of the forum and of member information to be of the utmost importance and have security measures in place.

Legal Disclaimer:
The EDS Forum operates as-available and as-is, without liability of any kind.

EDS reserves the right to change the content of this document at any time without notice. Members should check back often to remain up to date with the EDS Forum Standards. Last updated Tuesday September 11th, 2012.